"Were the zombies attacking us too?"
Emily nodded. "Yes. And Heather was leading them. She..." It looked like Emily was going to break down again, but she managed to get out what she needed to say quickly. "She...I was hiding, and I could see her coming into the house and she came straight towards me...and got me...she pulled me out of my hiding place and then-"
"Honey, don"t, it"s okay," Tracy said. She took Emily into her arms as the little girl began to sob again.
"That"s when I woke up," Emily said, crying. "That"s when I realized I was just having a bad dream, but now..."
"You were having a bad dream," I said, making a feeble attempt to soothe her nerves. With all the ugliness and death Emily had seen the past month, it was no wonder she had such a horrible nightmare. It was also obvious that despite the shielding Tracy and I had done to prevent Emily from learning about Heather"s disdain for her and her death (in the days following that altercation back in California, we simply told her that Heather decided to go off on her own, which she never questioned), somehow she"d picked up on both counts.
Emily looked at the five of us gathered around her. "Now I"m not so sure if it was a dream. It...felt too real."
Another chill raced down my spine. Was Emily somehow becoming psychically linked with the G.o.d of the New World? Was she receiving visions?
The thought must have been on everyone else"s mind judging by the looks on their faces.
"Is there anything else you can tell us about your dream?" Wesley asked.
"Was the winged creature looking for us?" Lori asked.
Emily nodded. "It was looking for us and...I don"t know how it found us. But...I get the feeling..." For the first time I saw a vision of Emily as a grownup; she suddenly looked mature beyond her years. "...that Heather knew where to find us...and led him to us."
"Was Heather...did it seem like she was being controlled?" Wesley asked.
Emily frowned. "No...but...she didn"t seem...like she was there. It was like...I could see it was her even though she was a zombie but...it wasn"t Heather." Emily was beginning to show the signs of frustration.
"I understand," I said quickly, rubbing her shoulders. I glanced at the gathered throng quickly. That"s enough questions for now. Everybody got the message.
"I"m going to take Emily upstairs," Tracy said, picking Emily up. "Lori, can you help clean and dress David"s wound better?"
"Sure thing." Lori knelt down beside me as Tracy and Emily exited the room.
Now with Emily and Tracy out of the room, it was open season on what we could talk about. "I don"t feel good about this," I admitted.
"Neither do I," Wesley said.
"Did Wesley tell you two what happened?" I asked Lori and Martin.
They nodded. Lori applied a warm cloth to the bite wound on my shoulder and began to gently clean it out. I winced. The pain throbbed, and in certain spots it was tender and throbbing.
"There"s no doubt Naomi was communicating with them," Wesley said. He was pacing the kitchen, still wound up with adrenaline from our earlier confrontation. "And if she was communicating with them there"s not only more of them, but they have some kind of link to this...thing...this G.o.d of the New World or whatever it is."
"What about this thing with Heather?" I asked.
"What about it?"
I briefly told them about my earlier conversation with Emily when she said that Alex was a "good guy." "I"m getting the feeling Emily might possess some kind of psychic ability."
"You think her dream represents something that might happen in the future?" Martin asked.
"It"s too much to be coincidental. We never told her about Heather"s death. How would she know?"
n.o.body had an answer for that.
Lori patted my wound dry. "I"m gonna apply another dabbing of peroxide on this and some first aid cream, then I"ll slap a fresh bandage on it," she said.
I nodded.
"You hurt anywhere else?" Lori poured peroxide into a dressing and began to clean the wound again.
"Just my inner right thigh where I was kicked a few times," I said. "But I can live with that."
"What about you, Wesley?" Lori"s focus was now on tending to our wounds.
"I"m fine." Wesley was still pacing the kitchen, still trying to work through what had just happened and what Emily had told us.
"That story Stuart told us last night," I began, "the one about the sacrifice he saw. He said he saw the primitive that was sacrificed come back, and that the G.o.d of the New World was flying over it and that it appeared the primitive was being manipulated. Like the G.o.d was pulling its strings, directing it. Possessing it, maybe. It was also taking on the G.o.d"s physical characteristics. Remember that?"
Martin nodded, suddenly looking pale. Lori stopped her ministrations on me, a look of terror on her face. "Jesus, David, I never thought that. My G.o.d, that would mean-"
"That the G.o.d of the New World is raising the dead? Yeah, I think that"s what it means."
And with that, the implications became even clearer.
If the G.o.d of the New World could reanimate the dead-primitive and non-primitive alike, then we really were screwed.
Once my wound was dressed and I got a little soup in me, it was decided that Lori, Wesley, and I would be with Alex when he woke up, that we would break the news of Naomi"s death to him as gently as possible. Because we had left the cabin in a hurry and did not bury Naomi"s body, we could not go with our original plan, which was to have him lead us to the property the following day and discover her absence, chalking it up as escape on her part. It was best to get this unpleasant task over with as quickly as possible. So I made a brief trek upstairs to check on Tracy and Emily. They were sitting on the bed, drawing in a coloring book. As hard as Tracy had tried to divert Emily"s attention from the madness we were living in, my daughter"s face still bore the signs of strain. "You okay?" Tracy asked me.
"Yeah." I gave her a brief recap of Lori"s first-aid procedure and p.r.o.nounced myself fit. "I"m going back downstairs. We"re gonna be there when Alex wakes up."
Tracy nodded. The original plan had been her idea, and I could tell she was devastated that there was no practical excuse for us to stick to it.
I joined the others in the living room where Alex was on the sofa, still fast asleep. He looked almost serene lying there.
The early evening setting sun was casting grim shadows across the room. I motioned to Martin. "What time is it?"
Martin checked his watch. "Almost six."
I nodded. It was hard to believe so much time had pa.s.sed.
"How long"s he been asleep?" Wesley asked.
"Almost four hours now," Lori said. She knelt down beside him and felt his forehead. Alex stirred at her touch and made a sound. "It"s okay," Lori told him.
"Hey," Alex said, opening his eyes. He stretched, yawned. "What"s going on?"
"We just wanted to see how you"re doing," Lori said.
"I"m okay," Alex said. He stretched, yawned again, and rubbed his eyes. I felt conspicuous standing there.
Wesley nodded at Lori.
"Baby, we"ve got something to tell you," Lori said. She laid a hand on his shoulder as he rose to a sitting position. "It"s not good news."
"What?" Alex looked at us wide-eyed, the sleep still in his eyes. He must have seen the grim expressions in our faces because he suddenly looked frightened. "What happened?"
"Naomi is dead, Alex," Wesley said.
Alex said nothing. He looked stunned; dumbfounded.
"David and I went to your place to help her," Wesley continued, speaking calmly, gently, with the right inflection of sincerity and condolence in his voice. "She was making that howling noise you described. That howling...the other primitives could hear it. She was calling other primitives-they arrived shortly after we got there and-"
"No, you can"t be serious?" Alex cried. His anguished face lit on each of us, as if imploring us to confirm this was some sick joke.
I nodded, feeling uncomfortable. "I"m sorry Alex, but it"s true."
"I don"t understand," Alex said. He looked at Lori as she sat on the sofa beside him, her arm draped comfortingly around his shoulders.
"We were forced to defend ourselves," Wesley said, still speaking in that careful, gentle tone. "The primitives caught us off guard. There were dozens of them, probably over fifty." Pause. "There was nothing we could do."
"So...you shot her?"
Wesley nodded. For the first time I"ve known him, he looked ashamed.
"You can"t be serious?" Alex"s voice rose to a hitch; he was on the verge of breaking down. "No, this isn"t right, she can"t be dead, please tell me you"re just f.u.c.king with me, please!"
"I"m sorry, Alex," Wesley said again, this time more softly. "We did everything we could."
Alex sobbed.
Martin, Wesley and I stood in a small semi-circle in front of the sofa as Alex cried. It was very uncomfortable. The pain of his loss reverberated loud and clear.
"Why?" he cried. Lori was cradling his head against her shoulder. "Why did you have to kill her! She just...she just needed help!"
"We tried to help her," I offered, the admission sounding futile now in the aftermath.
"Why?" Alex sobbed.
Lori looked at me as she tried to console Alex"s grief. "Go to the medicine cabinet and get me a Valium capsule," she said. "Brew up some hot tea and bring it to me."
I nodded and left the living room to do as Lori asked.
I used the rest of the still-hot water Tracy had boiled up and quickly made a cup of green tea. I got a capsule of Valium and brought it back to the living room. When I got back, Alex was still crying. Martin and Wesley were seated on chairs, looking uncomfortable and frightened.
I handed the tea and Valium to Lori, who took it. Alex was now doubled over as he sat on the sofa, rocking back and forth. His long s.h.a.ggy hair fell over his face. He kept saying something over and over. Something like, "No," or "I can"t believe it." He kept repeating these phrases.
"You okay?" I asked Lori.
She nodded as she broke the capsule and dumped the contents into the tea. "I"ll be fine. I think we need to be alone for a bit though."
Martin and Wesley stood up. "We"ll be in the radio room," Wesley said.
As Wesley and Martin left the living room I told Lori, "Make sure he gets some sleep. Join us later, okay?"
She nodded. She offered the tea to Alex. "Come on, baby, drink a little of this for me, okay?"
I left the living room and joined the guys in the radio room.
Nineteen.
Martin, Wesley, and I sat in the radio room and talked in low voices. Martin listened as Wesley and I filled him in on the details at Alex"s house. "It"s spreading," he said. "The G.o.d of the New World is reaching out to all the primitives, gathering them under his control and influence."
"We need to find out exactly what this G.o.dd.a.m.n thing is," Wesley muttered.
"It"s a demon."
We turned to the doorway where Lori stood. She entered the room and closed the door. "Alex is sleeping," she said. "I"m hoping he sleeps through the night. I"m going to bunk down here with him tonight."
"Who"s on ground floor watch tonight?" Wesley asked.
"I am," Martin said.
Wesley said nothing. Lori sat next to me on the small sofa that flanked the inner wall.
"Let me see if I can get Stuart on the line," Wesley said. He turned to the radio equipment, picked up the mike, and began fiddling with the switches. "Stuart, this is you-know-who on your band. Come in, Stuart. You listening, partner?"
Silence. We sat there for a moment, listening, hoping Stuart would come on, but there was nothing.
"Stuart, this is Wesley. If you"re there, please pick up."
The silence lengthened. I found myself hoping that Stuart was okay.
"Stuart, this is Wesley. I"m at my station and will be here all night. If you"re there, please answer."
There was a brief pause, and then a click on the other side.
"Stuart?"
Once again, there was silence.
And then a strangled hiss came from the speakers that almost sent me through the roof.